


blessed are the forgetful

by savebellamy



Series: bellarke in movies [1]
Category: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Childhood Memories, Childhood Trauma, Deja Vu, ESOTSM au, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Heartbreak, Love at First Sight, Manipulation, Memory Alteration, Memory Erasure, Memory Loss, Mind Manipulation, Out of order storytelling, POV Alternating, Strangers to Lovers, a lot of tears, but also kinda future-y, if you've seen eternal sunshine of the spotless mind then you know what you're in for
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-23
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2020-09-24 08:30:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20355487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/savebellamy/pseuds/savebellamy
Summary: You can erase someone from your mind. Getting them out of your heart is another story.





	1. prologue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How happy is the blameless vestal's lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each prayer accepted, and each wish resigned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shit i fucking love this movie. i've had little bits and pieces of this written for a while now, just haunting me while i've been trying to figure out how to write the rest of it, but finally after almost two months... here it is.
> 
> warning: spoilers for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and the spoilers for the graphic depictions of violence are at the end notes for anybody who may need it!
> 
> i hope you enjoy!

“It’s happening right now, isn’t it?” she asks aloud. “You guys are in my apartment, deleting everything…” 

Monty looks around the room and nods, “Huh. Yeah, I guess so. Anyways, you’re doing good, Clarke.” She remembers that she took a deep breath and nodded. She just nods now. “Just a few more things to go through. These maps are pretty complex,” he recites, just like she remembers. It’s a weird feeling, knowing exactly what he’s going to say.

_"With a procedure I invented using modern technology, we simply create a map of your memories, beginning with the most recent, that you wish to have erased. This is done by monitoring brain activity as you react to various objects that you have a connection to, emotionally."_

After the last few objects, he goes, "There! All done." She should be tearing up by now, but she feels numb. He looks at her expression and begins his joke, "It's not as bad as running laps, but it'll do." 

She looks around the room as Monty hands her the tissue box, and notices that the edges of everything around her are a little fuzzy. Suddenly, blank spots begin to form in the corners of her memory and she forgets what the room once looked like. The walls get whiter, items disappear from the counter tops. 

"You can go back to the waiting room, Harper will be there with the last of the paperwork for you to fill out," Monty told her. On autopilot, she nods and gets up out of the chair. 

Then, she's in front of the receptionist's desk, being handed form after form and being told where to sign. Everything's a little blurry. She wasn't paying much attention to these parts when they were happening. 

“Have a great day, Miss Griffin!” Harper wished her as Clarke walks out the door. Her memory is in bits and pieces. She’s walking to her car when suddenly she’s through her doorway, holding empty garbage bags. 

It had been a few days since she went back to the apartment. It’s just hers, really, but he was often over at hers more than he was at his own. After their last fight, she found it hard to stay inside, amongst every memory of him and them together. Now, a part of her understands why he needed to get rid of her. 

_"You bring in objects that are associated to what you want to have erased, and while the hard part comes first--facing these memories, it then better helps guide your brain back through them as the procedure goes on, sufficiently degrading and erasing them."_

She retraces her steps to the first objects: _ The Iliad _ and _ The Odyssey. _ He bought her the books for their one year anniversary, in order to share a piece of his childhood with her. She had once skimmed over the books for a school project, but never cared for them again after that. Until he gifted them to her. She pushes away the memory and the raw emotion that surges up inside of her, and shoves the books into a large garbage bag, just like she did the day before when it was real. 

After that, she picks out every picture from her photo albums of them together, pictures of the places where they went on dates, of people at parties they went to, their families at get-togethers they accompanied each other to, Halloween, Christmas, New Years, Valentine’s Day, everything is sped up, all a blur. The memory gets grainy, filled with static. 

None of the pictures stand out to her, she didn’t look at them for longer than a glance. She couldn’t let herself bask in the memory of him. He didn’t want her. She can’t want him. It’s too late now, anyways.

She’s then looking through the files beneath her desk, where she found sketchbooks full of his eyes or his hair or his hands and his smile, of his sister’s silhouette or her dog, and most heart-wrenchingly: sketches of them together in bed, post-coital or just cuddling while they slept. She always had these images in her head, despite not being able to see them in these positions with her own eyes, she knew they were beautiful together, and she had to draw them. 

There were tears streaming down her cheeks, down her neck, onto the collar of her t-shirt by the time she just decided to stop ripping pages out and instead throwing away whole notebooks. 

Now, any pages she stares down at are blank or full of incomprehensible scribbles. After tossing away the drawings, she tore out the last three years of her life from a daily journal she’d been keeping and then chucked it back across the room before moving on and tossing away newer sketchbooks. Clarke never realized how much she drew him and how much he was always on her mind, but she just bit her lip and kept going. 

Her mind goes through the memories and fills them with blank spots and suddenly, she’s sitting on the hardwood floor of her apartment amongst the emptiness. Though, on the outside, nothing looked any different, everything she had that reminded her of him was hidden and ingrained in her life, intertwined with who she was as a person. Books on bookshelves, pages in notepads, DVDs and music disks in their cases and sleeves. She didn’t have to dig, but she did have to uproot what felt like her entire life. 

Clarke takes a deep breath, in… and out.

Dr. Franco’s office again.

“Okay, Clarke,” Dr. Franco started as Monty set up the audio recording device. Clarke sighs, remembering why she’s here. This was one of the worst parts. “I’m just going to record this for our own files, and in order to get a good scope of what we’re looking for in terms of memories to erase.” Clarke nods.

Monty turned on the device and Dr. Franco cleared her throat, taking out a pen and paper, “Start with your name and who you are here to erase.” 

Clarke takes a deep breath and begins, “My name is Clarke Griffin, and I’m here to erase Bellamy Blake.” 

“Very good,” Dr. Franco complimented. Monty gave Clarke a reassuring smile. She returns it. “So, why don’t we begin by you telling me everything you can remember about your relationship with Bellamy? Tell me about him.” 

“‘We work to provide patients with relief from bothersome memories and feelings when they want to move on,’” Clarke mocks Dr. Franco, staring into thin air, just like the first time. Raven rubbed her back soothingly. “That’s what she said. He wanted to move on.” 

“What can I say, Clarke?” Raven asked gently. “You know how he is… he’s impulsive. He feels first, thinks second, and he never has been good at the negative feelings.” 

Clarke huffs. She was right. She was always right. 

“Didn’t he have a sister?” Wells asked. Raven gave him a look. Clarke nodded. “You could talk to her-”

“Give it a rest, Wells!” Raven scolded. He rolled his eyes. Clarke had considered it for a moment, but she could never interfere with his life again. He got rid of her for a reason, she kept reminding herself. That’s all she gets. Now, she wonders what answers she could’ve gotten from a little more investigating. Sure, she doesn’t necessarily deserve them, but maybe things would’ve turned out differently. 

“I’m just trying to help her!” Wells insisted as Raven started countering him. Clarke faces down into the kitchen table. She hates when they argue. 

The waiting room at Lacuna was full of sad-looking people with boxes and bags of memories, but Clarke hardly spared them a glance, which now results in the miscellaneous set of blurry faces. The building was warm and inviting on the inside, with couches and soft music that Clarke can’t exactly pick out in the back of her head. 

She stormed through the office, in search of answers, but unsure of what she’d do once she got them. As it turns out, she was going to get him erased like he did to her. 

"Miss- Miss, you can't go back there!" the receptionist, Harper, called out to the blonde. Clarke's eyes searched every room wildly until she found one with a doctor in it. Dr. Franco turns around just as Clarke opens the door, with her eyebrows raised, looking slightly surprised.

Harper caught up with her just as she was about to ask everything that had been on her mind: _ When did he do it? Why did he do it? _ "I'm sorry, Dr. Franco, she just walked right in-" Harper apologized profusely, but Dr. Franco cut her off to reassure her she did nothing wrong. No, that was Clarke. 

"That's okay, Harper," she smiled. Clarke blinks a few times to focus on her features. They’re slipping away. Harper nodded and sent an aggressive side-glance towards Clarke. "Please show Miss…”

“Griffin,” Clarke answers after a beat, remembering her line. Dr. Franco gave a genuine smile. 

“Please show Miss Griffin to my office. I’ll just be another moment here,” she says. Harper nodded out of the corner of Clarke’s eye.

Eventually Clarke’s sitting in a leather chair in front of a large desk. There are shelves of books behind the desk, with gibberish inscribed on the spines of them, considering Clarke can’t remember each and every title.

“I’m sorry for the wait, Miss Griffin,” Dr. Franco walked in, and around the desk to sit down in front of her. Clarke remembers feeling much more calm as she looked into Dr. Franco’s eyes, soft and kind and somehow so very understanding, even before she knew why Clarke was there. She must’ve gotten a lot of rampant patients. “Why don’t we start by introducing ourselves? I’m Dr. Becca Franco,” she held her hand out for Clarke to shake. She takes it and forces a small smile, like she did the first time through. 

“I’m Clarke Griffin,” she says. Dr. Franco nods. 

“Hello, Clarke,” she leaned back in her chair. “How can I help you today?” Clarke clears her throat. 

“My friends showed me the letter your company sent them about… someone,” she couldn’t even say his name then, and still can’t do it now, “who had me erased.” Now Dr. Franco’s face falls. 

“I’m terribly sorry you had to see that, Clarke,” she says very genuinely. “We really do try our best to keep a tight seal on this facility. Even though having more patients technically gives us more business, it’s usually best to remain faceless in the crowd. Especially for the service we provide.” 

“It’s fine, I just,” Clarke didn’t know how to spit it out the first time, but now she’s sure of what to say. She’s done it all before. “There’s doctor-patient confidentiality, I’m assuming,” she says. Dr. Franco nods sadly, looking like she gets that question often: _ why. _ This is when she knew she’d never get a true answer. And that, she was sure would eat her alive. Maybe getting him erased was the best thing she could do for the both of them. “Then could you just tell me… what are some of the reasons people come to you? What are their stories? Without names, of course.” 

Dr. Franco considered the question for a moment before leaning forward and folding her hands on the desk to answer, “Typically, we work to provide patients with relief from bothersome memories and feelings when they want to move on. More often than not, that means relationships that ended badly,” Clarke feels a sharp pang in her chest, “or the death of a loved one, perhaps. It’s also an alternative method to treating things like phobias or fears. They just want to be able to live in peace. I think we all do.” 

Clarke felt so stupid. She hurt him so much that he had to get a medical procedure done just to be able to function… She hardly even remembers what she said to him; something about how he only thinks about himself, something selfish, something… infuriating. Clarke’s head is in her hands again, mirroring what happened the first time through. It’s all too fresh to her, this open wound.

“Miss Griffin, are you alright?” Dr. Franco asked. Clarke nods, and at the time, silent tears were streaming down her cheeks, into the palms of her hands, and onto her jeans. But now, when Clarke sniffles, there’s nothing to wipe with the tissues on Dr. Franco’s desk. She can’t cry anymore. 

Then, after taking a few deep breaths, she comes to the very same conclusion she did days before now. 

“How does it work?”

“Three years! Three years and he just… got up and left,” Clarke said with her head in her hands, taking deep breaths to keep calm. Raven sighed beside her and continued to rub her back. 

“Honey, you know what it’s like when you two fight,” Raven tried to console her. “He begins to feel unwanted and-" She stopped herself and takes a deep breath. "Well, anyways, you have to move on.” 

Clarke's head snapped up. "_ That's _ your great advice? It's only been three weeks, I can't just- just give up on him like that! All he did was leave, he didn't tell me he never wanted to see me again!" She stood up and paced around the room as Raven and Wells shared a worried look. She ignored them. 

"Look, I'm sorry, Clarke," Wells began. Raven suddenly tried to shush him, as he glared at her. "What, you expect me to just let her suffer like this without telling her the truth?"

Clarke stopped dead in her tracks. "What are you talking about?" 

As Wells walked over to a pile of mail on their desk, Raven tried one last time, "Wells, don't-" He picked out the envelope he was looking for and handed it over to Clarke. 

Her heart raced as she took it and carefully peeled open the ripped envelope. A single piece of white cardstock lied inside. 

_ Dear Mr. and Mrs. Jaha, _

** _Bellamy Blake_ ** _ has had _ ** _Clarke Griffin_ ** _ erased from his memory. Please never mention their relationship to him again. _

_ Thank you. _

_ -Lacuna Inc. _

“What is this? Why are you showing me this?” Clarke looked up into Wells’s eyes, then looked to Raven across the room. She didn't look back at her. 

“Bellamy, he-” Wells tried, then rubbed the back of his head. "He had… trouble dealing with the arguing and the breakup…" he trails off. Clarke never thought of it as a breakup. It was just- just a stupid argument, and maybe she said some stuff she shouldn't have said, but- 

She dropped the letter as her eyes filled with tears, and she sat down once again, head in her hands. Raven came back around to sit next to her and rub her back. 

"I'm sorry, Clarke," Raven said, and lied her head on Clarke's shoulder to embrace her. "I'm so sorry…" 

Clarke is sorry, too. 

“Dinner, huh?” Clarke deadpanned. She winces at her own voice. This is it. This is the last time she ever saw him. Bellamy rolled his eyes. 

“Problem?” he countered. She watches as he drinks from the milk carton in her kitchen. That always bugged her- well, not always, but recently. It has recently bugged her that he does that. Why does he have to do that?

“Maybe. Do you know what time it is?” she asked. She really wants this one gone. _ Get it out of her head please, Monty. _ Bellamy clicked his teeth, just to annoy her, then shook his head. “It’s 3 am.” 

Bellamy belched, then threw the empty carton away before saying, “That early, huh?” 

Clarke gritted her teeth. “Did you drive here?” His movements were unsteady and his body sways as he walked. He was fucking drunk. 

Bellamy groaned, “No, I didn’t. I’m not that stupid-” 

“Could’ve fooled me,” Clarke cut in with a quick jab. She hates her words. But if she goes back through them, they’ll be quickly erased. 

“-I got a ride,” he finished, walking into the bedroom and falling onto the mattress. Oh, yeah. She knows what comes next. 

“Yep, saw that car, by the way,” Clarke said as she follows him into the room. “Who was it? One of those fuck buddies of yours? An ex? Who was it this time, huh?” She’d never been jealous or pushy before. He just brings that out in her. He gives her so many reasons to doubt herself and him and _ them _. He didn’t before. 

“Fuck you, it was just Echo,” he said, rubbing his face. Clarke felt pure anger surge up inside of her at the time. Now, she just feels devastated. 

“So ex-fuck buddy. Forgot that category,” she hissed. He had once confided in her about his complicated relationship with an old friend named Echo. It hadn’t bugged her until that moment. Why did _ she _ have to give him a ride?

“I didn’t sleep with anybody, in case you were wondering about _my_ side of the story and not just your insecure presumptions,” he rolled his eyes. Clarke clenched her jaw. 

“Not that you remember, anyways,” she tapped her foot a few times, refraining from letting all of her anger completely spill out.

“God, you’re so annoying,” he responded, revealing a pained expression. He was getting a headache. She didn’t give a shit. 

“_ I’m _ annoying? That’s rich coming from you, _ Belly _ ,” she spat the nickname she gave him. He disgusted her at that moment. But she wishes she could take it all back. It’s just too late. “Just because you can’t fucking face the fact that not everybody needs you _ all the time _, you have to get drunk and stupid, and I’m annoying for pointing it out?”

“And who is it that doesn’t need me, Clarke? You? _ Could’ve fooled me. _” his voice got louder. 

“Yeah, sure. Me, Octavia-” 

“How dare you fucking talk about my sister, Clarke, you have _no_ goddamn right-” But she did have a right. Octavia was _ her _ friend, too. But aside from that, she just needed to yell, and Bellamy just so happened to be there for it. 

“Well that doesn’t fucking matter now, does it? She only left because she was ready to grow up and you weren’t.”

“Don’t fucking talk to me right now, Clarke,” he growled through gritted teeth, getting up and walking towards the door. “Get the fuck away from me.”

“Fine! Just fucking run away!” She told him to go. She forgot that she told him to go. The words are spilling out of her now, “I’m _ so _ sorry you put on that protective act just because that’s the only way you know how to act like a fucking grown up! Just fuck whoever you want to since you're too afraid of being tied down-!” 

The front door slammed on her face. He was gone. She opens the door, just to chase after him, only to find herself back in the apartment. She never went after him. She just stayed in the apartment and cried herself to sleep. The scene around her starts to go fuzzy as she opens a window to the street below. She didn’t do this before. There’s nothing out there. 

“Can you see that, Bellamy?” she calls out to the nothingness. “I’m erasing you, because you did it to me first! You did that to me! But you’ll be gone by morning, and I’ll be happy!” She’s so angry and upset and-

“_ By the way, Harper’s gonna come over tonight.” _Harper. Receptionist. Monty’s voice. Why can she hear him?

The city park. One month ago. 

Their hands sway between them as they stroll through the park, among the fall leaves and children playing. Their faces are indiscernible, but Clarke remembers they were cute little kids. Bellamy chuckled beside her at their playful antics. 

“We should have kids,” Bellamy said suddenly. Clarke was expecting the words this time, and yet she still feels just as shocked.

“I don’t think we’re ready,” she responded. It’s not that she doesn’t want kids or that they don’t have enough money, she just… has doubts. About him.

“I am,” he said, squeezing her hand once. He gave her a small smile. “We could adopt.” 

Then, the words had just slipped out, “Are you sure you could take care of a kid?” His face scrunched up and he loosened his grip on her hand. 

“...I would be a good dad,” he insisted, avoiding her eyes. 

Clarke tried to go back on her words, “Well, I mean, sure you took care of Octavia, but it’s not really the same, especially since-” And that was it. His gaze snapped to hers, eyebrows furrowed. 

“Since what, Clarke?” he pushed. She snapped her mouth shut. 

“Let’s not talk about this right now-” she tried. He dropped her hand. 

“No, I want you to say it,” he said. His voice was growing louder. People were staring. Clarke’s heart aches. 

“I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean-” 

“Say it!”

Clarke finally broke, fuming at his insistence, “Since you have a hard time making logical decisions-!” 

“Fuck you, I would be a great dad,” he growled. Clarke walked away from him, saying that they shouldn’t talk about this right now. He followed her and continued, “You can’t just say that to me and then not want to talk about it! _ You’re _ not ready, Clarke. It’s always _ you _. And then you drag me into it, too, instead of just talking about it and letting me help-”

“Well I don’t need your goddamn help-!” Clarke turned suddenly and stopped him dead in his tracks. He looked so broken, and she didn't care. “I don’t need help.”

And then he walked away. She follows him, finding herself suddenly at their apartment a few nights before. 

Bellamy is eating Chinese out of the takeout box beside her on the couch, blankly staring at the running TV, which Clarke can only see as static. His scruff was growing back. She always liked how he looked. 

_ “You know, I don’t think Harper likes me.” _ Not Monty’s voice. Someone else, someone she doesn’t know. 

Clarke looks around for the intruding voice, but sees no one other than Bellamy beside her.

“There’s two of them here,” she mumbles to herself. Bellamy glances around the apartment. 

_ “She likes you, she just doesn’t know you.” _

“I don’t see anyone,” he shrugs. Clarke rolls her eyes.

“Obviously. They’re-” she motions with her hand that currently holds chopsticks, “-out there. Outside of my head… erasing you.” Bellamy slowly nods, ignoring her and watching the TV closely.

Clarke sighs in annoyance. This is what they were like near the end--unconcerned. He ignored her, she ignored him. If they said much more, it turned into an argument. These are what their nights consisted of. But their mornings….

She blinks and they’re in bed together, the summer sun shining in their eyes from the open blinds. She had just woken up, stretching the sleep out of her bones.

Bellamy was already awake, sipping on his morning coffee. He took his glasses off after climbing back into bed, a rare sight to see him without even his contacts in. Clarke smiles at his morning beauty, at his vulnerability. He gazed down at her with the same smile. They loved each other before they remembered who the other person was. 

“Good morning, sunshine,” he brought his hand down to caress the golden strands of her hair. She huffed out a laugh and slowly sat up, rubbing her eyes. 

“Morning,” she yawned, looking around the room. The floor was covered in the clothes they wore the night before. Last night, they had sex. It had to have been the last time. 

Bellamy set his coffee down before curling up beside Clarke, throwing his arms around and under her, cradling her close. Clarke giggled and pushed him slightly, without any force, and then gave into his embrace. 

They rolled around for a bit, joking and laughing, until Clarke found herself unusually tired again, and closed her eyes. She felt so happy, so carefree in the mornings with Bellamy. 

“Did you mean what you said the other day?” Bellamy asked from above her. Clarke didn’t open her eyes as she hummed in response, asking him what he meant. “About marriage.” 

Oh, this. 

Clarke hesitated. Bellamy’s eyes bored into her, even when she couldn’t see them. “Yeah, I did.” 

The air shifted. Bellamy’s grip loosened. Clarke can feel him slipping away from her, always slipping away. He never took rejection well.

“Oh,” he said. The emptiness killed her, but she couldn’t make herself comfort him. Clarke opened her eyes, and Bellamy was looking away from her, with his brows furrowed. She closed them again when he started talking. 

“I just feel like… we don’t need a certificate to prove to each other we’re in love,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be legal or official or whatever, not as long as we know its true to us.”

He was always so scared of binding agreements, or at least that’s what Clarke assumed this was to him. Marriage was a contract he would be tied down to forever. That’s why he didn’t believe in it.

Well, that’s another place where they differed. 

“Isn’t that the whole point of marriage?” she asked, opening her eyes again, and meeting his stare. “That’s literally why people get married, it’s because they’re in love. It doesn’t mean it’s forever, if that’s what you’re so worried about-” 

“Of course it isn’t!” he interrupted, jarred by the accusation that he couldn’t be committed to her. She fucked up again, but she had to go with it now. 

“People get divorced all the time, but in the moment, they’re in love, and that’s what matters: that it’s out of love.” Bellamy sat up, away from her, away from them. They were cracking and breaking. Splitting. 

“Marriage is just a social construct-” Clarke rolled her eyes and turned away from him. 

“Fine, Bellamy, then we won’t get married.”

“Will you ever let me see those sketchbooks of yours?” Bellamy asked from behind her. Clarke jumped at his voice coming so sudden, so close to seeing. She was sat on the floor beside their bed, knees tucked to her chest, sketching Bellamy’s morning hair in the smallest book she owned. 

She slammed the book shut and stood up, shrugging to answer his question. She was never very good at sharing with him. Bellamy did all the talking, all the showing off, all the expressive emotions. She didn’t… know how to. 

His brows furrowed in that all-too-familiar way. “You got something to hide?” He chuckled like it was a joke, but he was suspicious of her. As if he had anything to be suspicious of. Bellamy Blake had slept with half of the town before he met Clarke. She’d only ever had one other boyfriend besides him. 

Clarke played it off, “No, it’s just… private.” She set the book on the bedside table and crawled into his lap on the bed. He had been reading a book of his own prior to this, but it was now set aside in favor of paying attention to her. 

“Oh really?” he cocked an eyebrow at her, no longer concerned, but genuinely playful now. She grinned and nodded, then lowered her head to kiss at his jaw.

“_ You remember that guy we did last week?” _Monty’s voice again.

_ “The Greek god? Belly? Yeah, why?” _

_ “This is that guy’s girl.” _ They’re talking about-

“Bellamy!” she squealed, running up to him and marveling at his freshly shaved face. His hands settled on her waist. “Oh my god, you look two years younger!” 

“Only two?” he asked playfully, spinning them around the apartment. She giggled. 

“I never saw you any younger, Belly-”

Belly. Her face falls. 

“How does he know to call you that?” she asks this Bellamy. 

“Who?”

_ “Wow, this is her? She’s-” _

_ “Don’t finish that sentence.” _

_ “I wasn’t gonna say anything bad! She’s pretty. Her place is- nice.” _

“I don’t know,” she looks around, but it’s just their apartment as she remembers it. “There’s Monty, and then there’s-”

_ “Don’t you have a girlfriend-?” _

_ “Not anymore! She was crazy. All my exes are crazy.” _

_ “Uh-huh.” _

They’re cuddled together under the blankets in the cold air of spring. The heater wasn’t going to be fixed until the next morning. They had to share heat.

“Princess?” he asked from within the thick comforter and patchy quilt that his sister made them. When was the last time he ever called her that? 

Clarke tilted her head up to look at him. His eyes were closed, yet his brow gave away that he was still bothered by something. She reached up to caress the dark patch of his facial hair, then traced her pale fingers across his expanse of tan flesh which held constellations of freckles. “Yes, Belly?” She didn't notice as each dot disappeared beneath her fingertips as the procedure erased them from Clarke's memory bit by bit. Erased him bit by bit.

“Do you remember how lonely it was to be a kid?” Clarke considers it for a moment. Yes, she remembered. She remembers. “I always thought it was just me. That I was alone. I had Octavia, sure. But she was… so little. And she had me, but I never felt like I had her. I was the big brother, I gave advice and guidance and cured loneliness,” he said, pausing only because he ran out of breath.

“My sister, my responsibility. But I never got that back. Who was responsible for me, you know?” Clarke nodded, heart aching for little Bellamy, and shifted up and closer to him. He looked her in the eyes. 

“You’re not alone anymore, Belly,” Clarke promises. Promised. His eyes searched hers, looking for genuineness in her words. He nodded, and leaned into her, pressing his lips to hers in another silent promise, _ I believe you _. 

“You’ll never be alone again,” she vowed, kissing him fiercely, and everywhere she could reach. “Never again,” she said over and over, kissing his tears and his doubts away. She wants to piece him back together. She wants to cure his childhood trauma. She wishes she could’ve been there for him- She wants to be there for him now.

“Dr. Franco,” she pleads on her knees in front of the window of nothingness, in the clothes she last saw him in. Please, God, let them hear her. 

“Monty,” she whispers as she cuddles with Bellamy in their naked heat, desperately trying to keep from freezing. "I want to call it off! Dr. Franco-?"

“Please let me keep this one,” she cries, kissing his lips and his cheeks and his neck and his hair. “Just this one-”

“Bellamy!”

“Clarke-?”

“Bell-” He’s there, he’s here, he’s- 

She grabs his hands, his arms, forces him to look at her. 

“We have to go!” she demands, pulling him away from what she can remember. 

New Years. Pillow fights and movie marathons as it gets colder outside. Half naked in pajamas. His hair is uncut and messy, she’s growing hers out. 

“You’re my favorite, Princess.” 

Their trip to New York for Christmas to meet her family. The train ride was beautiful in the winter. Her hand in his as they encounter her drunken mother. He squeezes, silently understanding and refraining from any judgement. He loves her all the same. 

Movie theaters, shopping mall dates, running through the airport for vacation flights they almost missed-

“Hey, we’re going to visit Octavia in Florida-!” Bellamy notices excitedly. Clarke drops her bags. No, no, no-

“Where are we going?” he asks as she drags him in another direction.

“Away-!” Clarke shouts, pulling him along behind her, searching through endless airport hallways. They all look the same. They are all the same.

Wells and Raven’s for Thanksgiving. Bellamy was fighting with Octavia again, Clarke’s mother hadn’t wanted to see her since last year, before her father died. The food was amazing, they had so much fun, so distracted from the pain of reality.

“Dr. Franco!” she shouts into the void of memories. There are so many blank spots. Bellamy follows wordlessly behind her through the endless stream of hallways and flashbacks.

_ “So, why don’t we begin by you telling me everything you can remember about your relationship with Bellamy?” _Dr. Franco began again, sitting behind her desk, taking notes in front of the audio recording device. Monty is missing. Bellamy’s hand in hers feels ghostly. Clarke watches herself from the doorway sitting behind the desk, uncomfortable. 

_ “I was invited by my friends-” _ herself as a memory started.

“No, no! Shut up! She’s taking it from us-” Clarke tries. 

_ “-Raven and Wells, to go to this party they were having in Montauk.” _

“I’m sorry, Miss Griffin,” Dr. Franco addresses her. “You made your choice.” 

_ “And, I guess I’m not very social. I just sat by myself for half the time, until…” _ she took a deep breath. Clarke feels tears falling from her cheeks as she watches herself give them up. 

Clarke turns to Bellamy, but he’s gone, nothing but an empty void. She shakes her head violently, cutting herself off from speaking, “No! You’re taking him-”

“But I’m just your imagination, Clarke. I can’t help you,” Dr. Franco points out, perfectly calm, just as Clarke has always seen her. Clarke squeezes her eyes shut. 

“I’m just in my bed, I’m just sleeping while they-”

A young man stumbles in through the doorway, scattering papers and folders onto the ground. His face is blurry, unrecognizable. 

Clarke rubs her eyes and takes a deep breath, “Who is that?” 

Dr. Franco folds her hands together, “Oh, he works for us, his name is…”

Monty appears behind the unfamiliar young man, “F-”

“N,” Dr. Franco settles on, “FN.”

Clarke rubs at her eyes again, “He’s in my house, he’s erasing my memories, he’s- he’s-”

“Use your words,” Dr. Franco encourages. 

“Harper doesn’t like him!” Clarke exclaims, pulling at her own hair, falling into a pile of herself on the ground. She’s completely helpless. 

Montauk is covered in several layers of snow this time of year. It’s absolutely beautiful. They decided to head up there for the day and just take it all in. 

“Our house!” Clarke said, trying to run through two feet of soft snow to get to it. Bellamy runs up from behind her. 

“It looks amazing,” he sighed, pushing through along beside her. She looked at his red cheeks and the snow in his hair and on his coat and giggled at his appearance. She could say the same about him. 

But they were delving deeper into the memory they were trying to erase. Clarke grabs onto Bellamy’s arm and yanks him in the opposite direction. 

“But our house-!” he protests, pulling towards it. 

“No, Bell, we have to go!” she demands, falling into the snow again and again. Bellamy laughs his heart out, throwing snowballs at her and hindering her progress. She wants to fall into the feeling his laugh gives her and just play with him in the snow, but they need to run. They have to hide. 

He rolls them around in the snow, against her protests. 

“This _ really _ isn’t the time, Bellamy, we have to-”

“_ Go _, I know! But let’s just have fun, come on!” he says. He was so sporadic and spontaneous. Clarke could hardly keep up with him. 

Fall. The day before Halloween. 

“Bell-!” she tries, peering around trees for the dark haired man. They walked through the forest next to their favorite park and got lost among the dead leaves. He wraps his arms around her from behind, laughing when he startles her. She spins around to face him, “Focus! They’re erasing you.”

“What are you talking about?” Bellamy raises a brow, drifting away from her and resting on a fallen tree. He’s completely calm and carefree. She sits crisscross next to the log on the leaf-covered ground. 

“I don’t know, I hired them- I’m… I’m sorry,” Clarke puts her head in her hands. 

“Hey, hey, hey,” Bellamy shifts down next to her, rubbing her arms and giving her that reassuring look that works so well for her nerves. “It’s gonna be okay.” 

Clarke huffs, “How? I’m asleep, I can’t wake up, I can’t call it off-”

“Well,” Bellamy tries, furrowing his brows together. “I’m out of ideas.” 

“Thanks, Bell, real helpful,” Clarke says sarcastically, throwing a handful of leaves at him. “You know, we’re only in this mess because you erased me first.”

Bellamy looks down, ashamed, “I know, I’m sorry… but you know how I am. I’m impulsive! I feel first, think second.” Just like Raven had said. “My heart rules over my head. I probably couldn’t… function. I needed to restart.” Clarke sighs, and leans against his solid figure. It all feels so real. It is real. Too real. 

“I know, it's what I love about you," she admits.

"But we could’ve healed together,” she mumbles, tearing pieces from the dead leaves at her sides. 

“It just didn’t work out that way…” Bellamy kisses her hair.

“I have an idea,” Bellamy announces on their rainy day together weeks before Halloween. Clarke sits up and raises an eyebrow at him. He glances down at her cleavage for a second, causing her to roll her eyes. “But before I get to that, remember here when you wanted to have sex on the couch-?”

“Irrelevant, just tell me your idea,” Clarke says. There’s no time for this. 

Bellamy sits up as well, “Okay, so, we’re here together in this memory, right? This is a memory of us.” Clarke frowns. 

“Obviously.”

“So… why don’t you take me somewhere that doesn’t have to do with us? And then the erasing guys can’t find us, so we hide there until morning?” Bellamy finishes, ignoring Clarke’s doubtful look.

She considers it for a moment, staring at the raindrops scattering in a repetitive pattern outside. “I think that could actually work, Bell.”

“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Clarke,” her parents sang in unison, “Happy birthday to you!” 

“Make a wish, baby!” her dad encouraged. Clarke squeezed her eyes shut and thought up a wish: _ I wish to be happy forever _. Then, she blew the candles out. 

“Yay! Happy six years, sweetheart,” her mom said as she cut into the chocolate cake. 

“Clarke-” another man’s voice echoes throughout the room. Her parents don’t notice. “-You’re supposed to take me with you-!” 

“Belly!” her little baby voice shouts, running to their front door and swinging it open for the little boy waiting outside in the rain. 

“Is this your old house?” he asks, shivering. Clarke nods pulls him into a dry hug, then takes his hand and pulls him all the way to her childhood room. 

_ “What’s going on with it?” _

_ “Oh, I- I don’t know, I didn’t-” _

_ “What the fuck, Finn? She’s off the map. Were you paying any attention at all?” _

_ “I’m sorry! I-” _

_ “I leave the room for one second, and-” _

_ “One second? You were down there for, like, ten minutes!” _

_ “Can you not be trusted to just do your job for that long-?” _

“Ah, they’re still here,” Clarke says, setting down the Barbies she was playing with. She’s not a baby anymore, and neither is Bellamy. His movements with the Ken doll still at her voice. They’re so close to the surface, so close to being found. “The other guy, I guess his name is Finn.”

“He sounds…” Bellamy trails off. “Familiar.”

_ “What’s happening?” _ Harper’s voice. 

_ “Why don’t you ask Finn since he was supposed to be watching the monitor-?” _

_ “Back off, Monty, okay? I’m sorry! I was just-” _

_ “Just what?” _

_ “Whatever, alright? Can you fix it?” _

_ “Hell if I know.” _

“Well, they did you first. It was probably the same guys… Monty and Finn. But we’re hidden now,” Clarke tries to reassure herself. “They- they can’t find us here, right?”  
Bellamy nods, “Of course not.”

_“I’ll handle it. Just keep doing what you’re doing,”_ Dr. Franco.

Clarke panics. She looks to Bellamy, who’s still just looking at her with the same worried expression she’s wearing. He’s just a figment of her imagination, but… she’s not letting him go down easy.

“Come on,” she jumps up, pulling him with her. “We have to find another place to hide-”

August two years ago. Their six month anniversary spent at a drive-in movie. 

Clarke found him absolutely fascinating. He made her laugh, he made her happy. That’s all she’d ever wanted to be--happy. They cuddled and kissed during the tragic film, and Bellamy wiped her tears away with a small smile as she watched.

“It’s just-” Clarke sniffled at the movie’s end, wiping her face rapidly. “It’s just so sad, I mean-” Bellamy laughed and pulled her in for a hug. She melts into his arms, just like she did the first time. She wants to stay here forever. “They just loved each other so much, but they couldn’t even spend their whole lives together.”

“I know, Princess,” he soothed with an achingly beautiful smile. He had already seen the movie, and knew what to expect. “But it’s okay, it’s just a movie.”

Clarke sniffed and backed away, wiping her face with her sleeves again. “Well, yeah, but it’s so realistic. Sometimes,” she pauses, knowing what her next words are, and feeling the irony so deeply within herself. “Sometimes you just don’t end up with the one you love.”

Bellamy caressed her face, pushing her loose strands back and pulling her in for a deep kiss. Clarke sighs and presses into it, feeling every emotion at once.

But her eyes snap open and she pushes back the moment she remembers what’s going on. 

“Fuck, we have to go,” Clarke pushes Bellamy out his door as the big screen in front of them disappears, along with the rest of the cars parked around them.

“What do you mean, where are we going-?” Bellamy asks while Clarke drags him away from the memory.

_“She seems to have developed some kind of… resistance to the procedure,” _Monty theorizes. Clarke rolls her eyes. Why can’t they just give up already?

“Clarke,” Bellamy says. She turns back to him, realizing they’re already in another memory. 

The first time Clarke ever saw where he worked--at their local library. She thought it was so fitting somehow, despite his wild personality. He was so… wise, like an old book, even if he didn’t fully think his decisions through, he was at least well informed about history. 

“You have to hide me somewhere really deep, somewhere really buried!” he suggests as Clarke begins to pull him away from the rows of bookshelves.

She’s only eight years old when she learns about death.

“Hey, look!” her friend calls from behind her dog house. “A bird!” Clarke and their little group runs over to see it. When they get there, Clarke is sure there’s something wrong. 

“That’s not a bird!” another girl says with a mean frown. “That’s a _ dead _ bird!” And that makes a little more sense… The wings are completely mangled behind the body and the beak is faced upwards towards the sky. It’s missing some feathers. At least it’s eyes are closed. 

“What’s the difference?” the first kid asks. 

“When birds are dead, they don’t fly anymore, dummy!” the other girl yanks on her braided pigtail, earning an “ouch!” from her friend, and then bends down to pick the dead bird up by it’s broken wing. 

Clarke looks around for any adults, feeling very wrong about messing with the dead body, but only spots little Bellamy a few feet away, sitting in a lawn chair. The friend with the bird walks over and places it on an old wagon with a broken wheel, then picks up the rusty hammer right next to it. 

“I’ve got an idea!” she says. “Let’s play surgeon!”

“How are you supposed to play surgeon without a knife?” Clarke speaks up for the first time. She knows how surgeons work, since her mom is one, and she knows for sure that they don’t use hammers. 

The bratty girl narrows her eyes, “Well, if you know so much about it, then why don’t you make the first incision, _ doctor _?” Clarke feels sick as she takes the hammer from her mean friend. “Go on.” 

“I…” she tries to think of an excuse, staring at the bloodied body of the bird and the ugly, dirty hammer. “I’ll do it later.”

“No, you’ll do it _ now _.” Clarke swallows the lump in her throat. Little Bellamy comes up behind her.

“You don’t have to do this,” he says, rubbing her back. She shakes a little bit under the weight of the hammer in her little hand.

“I have to go home,” she tries again, but this time the other friend speaks up.

“Just do it, Clarke, don’t be such a baby.”

“I’m not being a baby, I just have to go home, so I can’t-”

The bratty friend cuts her off, “Do it, stupid!” And then they’re both yelling at her, screaming at her to just do it, hit the bird, make the first incision. It’s not that hard, she’s just being a dumb baby.

So she does it.

And she does it again and again and the blood is everywhere, it’s guts are spilling out, she’s completely broken its legs and wings and its head is nearly gone. She just keeps hitting it while blood and tears fall down her cheeks. She’s not a baby.

Bellamy pulls her away from the scene moments later, forcing her to drop the hammer and walk away with him. The other girls make mocking faces at her while she leaves and continue to call her a baby.

“I’m so…” Clarke tries to find her words as they walk back to her house. “Ashamed.” Bellamy pulls her into his side.

“It’s okay, Princess,” he says. “You were just a little kid.”

Clarke sighs, “I wish I knew you when I was a kid.” Bellamy nods with a sweet smile on his face.

“Me too.”

When they reach her childhood home, Clarke and Bellamy sit in the little front lawn and just watch as the paint and the wood and the walls decay away. 

“They’ve found us,” Bellamy says, squeezing Clarke’s hand a few times. 

Clarke nods, rubbing at her face, “Yeah, I know.”

“People think I’m exciting and that I might be able to solve all their problems,” Bellamy confessed to her the second time she ever met him. Clarke’s eyes searched his. “I’m just looking for my own peace of mind.” 

“I still thought you would save me,” Clarke laughs, watery and pitiful. Bellamy reaches up to push back a strand of hair from her face. Then, he leans in close. 

“Remember me,” Bellamy says in her ear, among the bookshelves and tangible silence. “Try your best, Princess.”

Wells and Raven never really meant to make her the third wheel, she just… was. 

They held hands and walked beside her, they sat in the front seats together while she sat in back… And even among their bullshit arguments, they loved each other. Clarke envied that. 

Their party wasn’t any different, except now Clarke was third wheeling them and all their friends combined. They were all married and in long-term relationships. She was on a date with a grilled hamburger on the Montauk beach, where they had decided to celebrate five years together. 

It was still a little bit too cold to be swimming, but Clarke daydreamed about coming back and diving right into the water, once it warmed up after the initial chill of spring. Just as long as the sun was out. 

In her moments alone, on the steps of some empty, abandoned beach house near where the party was in full swing, she noticed a messy head of hair making its way around, mingling among the people and the music and the fun. 

She watched as he laughed and joked and seemed to know just about everybody that was invited personally. They all loved him. They were encapsulated by him. She was, too.

_ “He was… absolutely beautiful. He found his way around the party so well, and I wished that I could be like that-” _

Clarke, somewhere deep within herself, wished that she could be like him: outgoing and down to earth and extroverted and just so _goddamn_ beautiful. But then, just as he caught her eye for the first time, giving her a dazzling smile and a little wave, she realized, no, she didn’t want to _ be like _ him, she wanted him. 

_ “-But then I realized, no, I just wanted him to talk to me like that, too.” _

He gracefully made his way over to her, and when he reached her, he said, “I don’t know if you noticed,” Clarke raised a brow at him. “But the party’s over there.” He sat down beside her, far enough away not to make her uncomfortable, but just close enough so that her skin vibrated from the close proximity. 

_ “Talking to him was what brought the fireworks, but he was just friendly at first.” _

“Really?” Clarke countered sarcastically. “I hadn’t noticed.”

_ “I mean, he was a total asshole, but… there was no ulterior motive to get into my pants or anything.” _

“Well, I’m happy to be of assistance,” he chuckled. “Who dragged you here?”

_ “He just wanted to start a conversation.” _

“The couple of the hour,” Clarke nodded over at them in the crowd, drawing Bellamy’s eyes over to the two at the very center of it all. “My very bestest friends.”

“Oh, yes,” he laughed. “I know them very well.” He turned to her and stuck his hand out, “I’m Bellamy.” Clarke cracked a smile.

“I’m Clarke,” she shook his hand. Bellamy kept his gaze on her, even when she turned back to her food.

“This is it, Princess,” he says, motioning around them. “This will all be gone soon.” 

Clarke nods, “Yeah, I know.”

“What do we do?” 

She considers it for a moment. They were done running and hiding. They couldn’t escape their stupid, impulsive decisions any longer. All they could do was accept them and bask in the glory of their old newfound love. 

“Enjoy it.”

The beach house, slowly and over the course of a few hours spent together at the party, became theirs. They danced around each other in the sand, on the porch, on the steps. When it got dark, Bellamy had the brilliant idea to just go inside. 

“What are you _ doing _?” Clarke hissed as Bellamy crouched down in front of the doorknob. 

“Whatever the hell we want,” he chuckled, taking out a paperclip and jamming it into the keyhole. 

“Isn’t that... what’s it called-? Breaking and entering? AKA,” Clarke points out nervously, watching him toy with the knob. “A crime?”

“I thought it was just a misdemeanor,” Bellamy said halfheartedly. He didn’t really care about breaking the law. That scared her. A lot of things scared her. 

“Not in this case,” she mumbled, glancing around them to make sure no one was looking. To be fair, no one was even really around, other than maybe twenty yards away towards the bonfire Wells started. They probably wouldn’t get arrested. Still, Clarke had only ever followed the rules since she was born. This… this was crazy. 

He finally gets the lock to turn with the bent paperclip, which made Clarke wonder if he only came out there just to rob the place, but the thought was lost the moment she got a look inside. 

“Wow,” she breathed out, looking around at the cozy interior. This place was loved and cherished by a family, most likely. 

“These people are loaded,” Bellamy jokes. 

“I wonder what it’s like to have a functioning family,” Clarke laughs. 

Bellamy chuckles, “Yeah, no kidding.” 

Inside, Clarke can only remember bits and pieces. She felt at home in the atmosphere, that’s for sure, and there was a chandelier above the dining room table, a few bookcases filled with home-y recipe and parenting books. Maybe Clarke is remembering it wrong, but this place was magical. It was a home. Their home. But not in the moment. 

“What if they come home?” Clarke asked, paranoid. They were really pushing it. This was so incredibly illegal, and- what if they got caught? 

Bellamy laughed, “They’re not coming home tonight, trust me.” He looked around, pulling a flashlight out of a nook in the row of books and turning it on. 

Clarke’s heart sped up, “I think we should just go, Bellamy.” 

Instead, he walked further into the house. 

“Tonight, we are… Mr. and Mrs. Laskin,” Bellamy chuckled as he read through their mail. “And while I prefer to be mister, I can be flexible.” He winked in her direction, then kept walking. Clarke followed hesitantly before, but now she was eager to stay with Bellamy as long as she could. But that was when he went upstairs, flashlight and bright eyes and all. She didn’t follow him. 

“I really think I should go!” Clarke called up the stairs, glancing around herself, paranoid as ever. 

There was a pause from the second floor before he said, “So go.” 

“And I did,” Clarke says now. “I thought you were fucking crazy, so I just… left.” 

“I wish you’d stayed,” Bellamy’s voice calls down. Clarke never saw him again until a week or two later, when she asked Raven where he worked. 

“I wish I did, too,” Clarke breathes, feeling the memory around her breaking apart as she forgets it more rapidly. “I wish… I wish I’d done a lot of things.” 

The ocean is on a loop outside; towards the shore, away from the shore, towards-

“I came back downstairs,” Bellamy says. “And you were gone.”

A tear trickles down Clarke’s cheek as she nods and says, “I just walked right out.”

She can hear the concerned furrow of his brow as he asks, “Why?” 

Clarke shrugs, keeping her eyes on the ocean waves. “You said 'So go,' like you didn’t care.” The house is crumbling under its own weight and the weight of Clarke’s heart. She believes she left it with him that night: on the second story of their beach house in Montauk. But she just walked right out. 

“I’m sorry,” Bellamy’s voice says so genuinely. Clarke has long since forgiven him for everything. But she just walked right out. 

The ocean is constant, the bonfire is, too. It’s all she remembers. There was the car ride home with Wells and Raven’s petty arguments. She watched the house go by, gone forever, at least at that moment. That’s all there is left. 

“What if you stayed this time, Princess?” Bellamy asks, descending the staircase. Clarke turns back around and faces the front door. 

“How? I left, there’s- there’s no memory here,” she says, trying so hard to remember his beauty. 

“Let’s just pretend,” he says, beckoning her back towards him, towards them. “Just pretend that we said goodbye.” 

Clarke is in his arms once again, staring into his beautiful eyes and running her hands through his wild hair. Her heart in his hands feels so heavy, she can’t think straight. 

“I love you,” she confesses to him one last time. The floor will cave in at any moment, the stars have already been shining through the cracks in the ceiling. There is no memory here. 

He leans in to kiss her cheek before saying into her ear, _“May we meet again.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warning: description of blood and guts from beating an (already dead) bird to mush with a hammer as a small child
> 
> mebi oso na hit choda op nodotaim


	2. may we meet again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> now here's where i deviate from the original story a lot. because i felt like i was writing too closely to the movie, here i am, months and months later with something new. thank you to those who gave kudos, commented, and bookmarked. you kept me motivated.
> 
> i hope you enjoy.

_ May we meet again. _

**One year later. **

Something jolts her out of sleep. 

Sweat fuses her t-shirt to her skin. The back of her head is in a knotted mess of blonde and pink locks. She’s been here before. Many times before. 

The sleeping body next to her is unfazed by her movements, still as a statue, as she stands up from her bed, legs moving out of habit rather than her brain telling them to. Her thoughts are elsewhere.

Her eyes clench shut at the bathroom’s white light. She shuts the door behind her, and the satisfying  _ click _ of the lock reminds her that she’s safe. But once her eyes adjust to the new lighting, she shakes her head and realizes she was safe even before stumbling into the bathroom. She’s always been safe, hasn’t she?

The hiss of the running water echoes throughout the small space. She ducks her mouth beneath the faucet and drinks, trying to return her heart rate and breathing back to normal. 

After she’s satisfied, she shuts the water off and stares at herself in the mirror for a moment. 

Unsurprisingly, her hair's a mess of blonde and pink. She brushes her fingers through the knotted locks, trying to appear slightly presentable. It’s grown out quite a bit since she last cut it all off two years ago after her mother practically disowned her. Her middle name should be mental breakdown. 

The pink is the newest addition to her look, something she just suddenly  _ had _ to do one day a few months ago after another identity crisis. It’s grown out enough to color just the tips of her hair. It sort of makes her seem less boring. Lucky for her, her office job doesn’t fire employees for colored hair.

She bites her lip, and attempts to focus more on her hair to keep herself calm, but as much as she tries, she can’t. She looks away from the mirror and seats herself on the edge of the bathtub, head in her hands, biting her lip, anxiously bouncing her leg. 

Goosebumps trickle down her limbs, but she’s not cold. She’s just trying to remember. 

Sometimes the dreams are good. Really good. Her heart feels full, her mind is free, love encases every broken piece of herself and puts it all back together. 

Sometimes they’re bad. Her mind is racing a mile a minute, her mouth is running even faster, saying words she doesn’t mean, screaming into a void, angry faces as an audience. Who are they? Who is she?

But the ending is always the same. She wakes up, and she’s afraid of what she saw in her mind, despite failing to remember even a second of it. All she remembers is the longing. 

A soft knock at the door pulls her out of it.

“Clarke?” His voice is raspy, like it always is in the mornings. The sound of his voice used to bubble up something good inside of her. Something like love and adoration. Even through the door, she knows what his face looks like, screwed up into a frown, his eyebrows knitted together in a perpetual state of worry. That used to stir up beautiful feelings, too. 

But now, she just feels nothing. 

“Yeah, I’m here. I’ll just be a second,” she says, trying to buy herself more time. Finn is great, really. She has no reason not to love him. She  _ should _ love him, in fact. They have so much in common, they hardly fight. It was a dream come true to get these characteristics in only her second boyfriend, the first being just a high school fling. 

So she should love him.

A few months ago, she felt like she did. 

“I’ll make some breakfast,” he says before walking away from the door. Clarke sighs. Her heart is confused. Everything caught her off guard with these stupid dreams and her stupid brain for going back on what it once was so sure of. 

Finn is speeding around the kitchen once she steps out of the bathroom. Being the perfect boyfriend, as always. Where she once felt butterflies, knots begin to form. 

“You don’t have to do all this,” Clarke says, really wishing he would stop showing her how much he cares. He’s making pancakes and coffee and cutting up fruit. He treats her like she’s royalty. 

Finn turns around with a smile. “Of course I don’t have to, I want to. For you, princess.”

His words are like a dagger to her gut. Clarke blinks, trying to figure out why there’s a sudden itch in the back of her mind.  _ What _ is going on with her? Even if her dreams left her with a bitter taste in her mouth, reality has never bothered her this much. 

Something inside of her has flipped like a switch.

“Uh,” she stutters. “Yeah. Thanks. I got to--” she stumbles backwards towards her-  _ their _ room, “I’m gonna get ready for work.” 

Pushing away all thoughts of dreams--or  _ nightmares _ , really--she tries to remember her routine. Usually she doesn’t wake up drenched in her own sweat and tears, so today, she feels entirely off balance, and decides her routine is out the window for all she cares. More and more of a weight seems to resurface in the back of her mind and itch at her to just  _ fucking figure out what’s going on _ . 

She rummages through her closet for a work outfit that looks decently respectable, throwing clothes onto her-  _ their _ unmade bed left and right. Clarke figures she can skip a shower just to get the hell out of there sooner. The walls are closing in on her. She can’t skip brushing her teeth. She’s trying to keep her breathing level. Skip breakfast. Ignore Finn’s puppy dog eyes. Don’t skip brushing her hair. 

Clarke is out the door in record time, almost two hours before she has to be at work, after forcing herself to smile at Finn and give him a chaste kiss on the lips, which of course would only intensify that  _ feeling _ of impending doom. 

Naturally, she shows up at Wells and Raven’s house, the latter of which doesn’t waste any time. 

“You look like shit, Clarke.” There’s a heavy amount of concern behind her harsh words, which Clarke ignores, because  _ she knows _ . She pushes her way inside, and places herself onto their new rug in the living room, laying back and feeling her chest rise and fall with every breath. Things sure have changed since she was last there a few months ago. 

“Why is Clarke on our floor?” Wells asks when he walks in. Clarke peers up at him, upside down from where he stands at her head. His brows are furrowed, eyes slightly widened. She clenches her jaw at that itchy, annoying, scary feeling in the back of her mind while it builds and builds the longer she stays silent.

“What’s happening to me?” is all she can make out before something inside of her completely snaps. 

What feels like just seconds later, she’s laying in their bedroom, staring up at a slowly oscillating ceiling fan. Clarke, after another moment of panic, realizes she must have literally passed out. She cranes her neck up to see Raven speaking on the phone down the hallway.

“No, Abby, I’m 99% sure it’s not drugs,” Raven insists in a hushed voice. “Don’t you know what  _ day _ it is?” A pause. “Of course you don’t.”

No doubt that her mother doesn’t care what’s going on with her. Clarke attempts to keep her breathing and heart rate stable as she sits up. What day  _ is _ it? Monday, she guesses. God, she can’t go to work today.

Wells walks in with a wet rag and a bottle of water just then, taking Clarke from her thoughts. He gives her a pitiful smile. Clarke frowns. 

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asks, and it sounds so  _ childish _ . Maybe she pities herself, too. For being a complete fucking mess.

But Wells thinks nothing of it, offering her the water bottle as he folds up the rag. “You just blacked out in our living room. I’m allowed to be a little concerned.” He places it on her forehead and gestures for her to lay back. She does, after taking a sip from the water. They’re silent for a moment before Clarke breaks it.

“Why is Raven on the phone with my mother?” 

Wells purses his lips and looks towards the brunette at the end of the hall, still whispering into the receiver. “She didn’t know what else to do. I also called Finn--”

Clarke jolts right up. “What?” Wells is shocked by her movements. 

“Hey, hey, hey. What-” Wells tries to find his words, grabbing Clarke’s hand gently. “Does he have something to do with this?” Clarke doesn’t really know how to answer that. 

“I-” she tries. “No, not really.” Wells looks doubtful. She persists, “Really, he’s done nothing wrong,” she lays back down, “He’s been disgustingly perfect, actually.” Her own words surprise even her. 

Wells chuckles, rubbing his thumb across her knuckles comfortingly. “That doesn’t sound like a real problem.” 

But to Clarke, it kind of  _ is _ . It’s weird with Finn. Like he knows exactly what to say. 

Well, he’s sort of always been like that. Ever since their first meeting when they ran into each other outside of the local library. She hadn’t visited in a long time, maybe not ever, because the place felt familiar, but she couldn’t pick out an individual memory of being there.

And she was staring at the outside of the window display for a few minutes, admiring how the librarians must have made it for the kids in town, when he spoke to her for the first time. 

“I don’t know if you noticed,” he started, walking up beside her. “But the door’s over there.” And the words were so strangely familiar that they filled her chest with something warm

The joke was… incredibly unfunny, but the sly smile he gave her when she turned to look at him was charming, and his floppy dark hair fell in a certain way- 

He was cute. She was interested. 

Her next words fell out of her mouth without her brain thinking at first, but once she said them, they seemingly fell right into place, “Really? I hadn’t noticed.” It was a pleasant deja vu. He grinned, they talked, he asked her out. 

Even on their next few dates, he would say things that were so  _ intriguing _ . It was like he was speaking her own thoughts about every topic they discussed. He immediately knew how to make her laugh. He was exactly what she needed as a break from her maddeningly boring single life.

The only problem is that now, when he says just the right thing or knows exactly what’s on her mind, it’s… disorienting rather than comforting or charming. The deja vu she felt now was maddening, and almost predictable, for scenarios and conversations that she  _ swears  _ have happened before. 

But that couldn’t be. Because before Finn, she simply wandered life without finding significance in the little things, not in the way their relationship did. All of her friends were dating or married, her mother wasn’t speaking to her, the office job she currently held was so bland it was turning her hair grey prematurely. 

When he wandered into her own path, he was everything. He made her happy. 

And that’s all she’d ever wanted to be. Happy. 

What  _ changed _ ?

She doesn’t realize Wells has been talking the entire time until her mind comes to an impasse. “...He said you were acting strange this morning. When I talked to him, he said he was coming over now to check on you-” 

This makes her jump out of bed again, throwing the wet rag down, letting the bottle of water topple to the floor with a plastic crunch. 

“Clarke-?” Raven comes in as she’s looking around for her jacket and Wells is attempting to get her to sit again. 

“I don’t want to-” she starts, but she realizes she’s yelling. She levels her voice. “I just don’t want to see him right now, okay? I woke up feeling  _ weird _ . And every time he says something to me, it just gets  _ worse- _ ”

Their doorbell rings, followed by furious knocking on the front door. 

Clarke groans. It’s not anxiety, really. Not since this morning. She’s  _ frustrated _ now. At herself, mostly. 

Raven and Wells exchange a look just before Raven goes to answer the door. 

“We’ll be right here with you,” Wells says reassuringly. Clarke knows he has no idea why they’d need to be providing her comfort around her own boyfriend who she’s had zero problems with beyond the last few weeks, but that only reassures her even more. They’re on her side. She’s not going crazy.

Maybe she is, but they’re still on her side.

“Finn, just take it easy-” Raven says, but he’s already inside, stomping around and looking for her.

“Clarke?” he calls from down the hall. Clarke takes a deep breath and nods to Wells, accepting his help, but she places her hand on his shoulder to keep him there. She doesn’t want him to follow. He understands.

She walks into the living room, trying to look normal. A part of her is hoping that once she sees him, it will all be over. And her mind can rest again, like it did months ago. 

But once their eyes lock, her stomach tightens, and that’s just the first indication that nothing’s ever going to be the same. 

“Hey,” he says softly, walking up to her with kind eyes and sweeping a gentle hand across her cheek. “I found you, Princess.”

She’s shaking her head “no,” before her mind catches up with the action, and his brows furrow to give away his confusion as that  _ itch _ in the back of her mind intensifies with every passing second he stares into her eyes and continues to caress her cheek. 

The word echoes inside of her mind.  _ Princess.  _

_ Princess. _

_ What if you- Princess. _

She hears it in his voice inside her head. It feels like she’s suddenly remembering a dream or a forgotten word, just on the tip of her tongue, so close to figuring it out, her mind is on the edge of a cliff. 

“Don’t call me that,” she says automatically. “You-” 

_ You’re my- Princess _ .

These words suddenly come to life inside of her, as if they’re rising from some deep and hidden place in her subconscious. But where are they from? How could she remember things that Finn has never said? 

“What’s going on, Clarke?” Finn captures her cheeks in both of his hands now, cradling her face. “Talk to me.” She shakes herself free of his grasp, leaving him standing there empty. 

“No,” she says, glaring at him. Something is wrong and- it’s  _ his _ fault. Somehow. “I need you to leave.” 

Finn frowns and crosses his arms. “I’m not going anywhere.” She’s slightly surprised at his reaction. But only slightly. His irritation is new. They’ve never been so against each other before in all 9 months of their relationship. Only, it feels sort of normal. Like she’s been here with an irritated man before. 

She frowns right back at him, feeling pure emotion surge up inside of her. 

“Fine,” she says, turning around and stomping back into Wells and Raven’s room. They’re there, practically pressed up against the door to hear what was going on in the other room. 

“Clarke!” Finn calls, attempting to follow after her. Raven gets to him first, blocking his pathway into the door. Clarke ignores them, searching for her stuff, making sure she hasn’t left anything behind. 

Wells comes up beside her, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Hey,” he whispers. “Do you want us to kick him out? You can stay here as long as you need to.” 

Clarke is trying to control her anger, keeping her breathing steady. She’s not moving anymore, grounding herself in Wells’s touch, but her eyes are still frantic, looking around and deciding if this really is a place of comfort. 

But before she can answer, she spots something strange. A wooden picture frame, faced down on the vanity. Clarke doesn’t really understand the implication of this. It’s just a frame. Her hands take control of themselves, snatching it up before Wells realizes what she’s doing. 

He gasps and protests, attempting to take it from her hands, only confirming what she originally thought: something’s going on. She avoids his hands, elbowing and slapping them away, turning her back to his front as he grabs wildly at the frame. 

The picture is normal. Wells and Raven with a bunch of friends on the beach, one she doesn’t immediately recognize. This must have been a get-together of some sort. Why wouldn’t they want her to see this?

“Clarke-!” Raven says from the doorway, now realizing what she’s looking at. Wells has given up his protests by now, simply waiting anxiously behind her. Even Finn is silent, watching her from behind Raven. 

And then she sees it. Her heart stops. 

She’s in the picture. But she can’t find the memory of ever taking it. 

She’s in this picture with her only friends at a gathering she can’t recall, on a beach she can’t remember. 

Her hair is long and blonde, like it hasn’t been in years. The smile on her face is nearly unrecognizable, so happy and carefree in a way she hasn’t felt in a long time. And then, beside her-

“Who is this?” she whispers, dragging her fingers across the glass on his face. He’s familiar. Clarke has definitely seen this man’s face before. But she doesn’t remember where. Or how. “ _ What _ is this?” Clarke turns around, jaw clenched, looking between Raven and Wells’s guilty eyes. 

She ignores Finn’s expression. He’s angry. Clarke doesn’t care. 

“I told you to put that away-” Raven says to Wells, stomping over to Clarke and trying to take the frame from her hands. Clarke reacts first, holding it behind her back, and forces Raven to look into her eyes. 

“Tell me what’s going on. Tell me why-” Clarke pleads, trying to find her words. “Why am I in this picture when I don’t remember being here?”

Raven purses her lips. 

“It was our five year anniversary,” Wells says suddenly, breaking the silence. Raven looks down at her feet. “We spent it in Montauk.” 

_ Montauk. _

Clarke’s mind and heart are racing. “That doesn’t answer my question,” she says, looking between Wells’s guilty eyes. 

He hesitates, but eventually says, “Lacuna.” 

The word means nothing to Clarke, but one look at Raven and even a glance over at Finn says that it should. 

“You have no right, Wells,” Finn growls, walking towards Clarke. She puts her hand up to stop him, and Raven once again blocks his path. “You all signed a contract-”

“Shut up, Finn,” Raven says. Clarke looks quickly between them during their interaction, trying to piece everything together on her own. “Fuck the contract. Don’t you see what it’s doing to her? I told you all there wasn’t enough lab testing, I even told Bell-”

“Raven,” Wells cuts her off. “Go get the papers.” 

Finn tries to protest, but both Wells and Clarke dismiss him, leaving him to stand there silently fuming once again. 

When Raven returns, Clarke has sat back down onto the bed, and Finn is tapping his foot impatiently in the doorway. A part of her wishes he wasn’t here right now. Not for his sake, but for her sanity.

Lacuna Inc. is plastered all over the documents that Raven comes back with. Some pieces are simply advertisements, a few years old and showing off some new procedure that promises to “make life easier,” or help customers “live in peace.” Clarke still can’t quite figure it out from these papers, so she keeps reading, and Finn gets increasingly antsy.

“Clarke, can I just explain before you go too far?” he pleads. Clarke raises her eyes to his. 

“Are you really going to tell me the truth?” she challenges. He clenches his jaw, and stays silent. Clarke looks between his eyes, and finds comfort in the TV static of emotions that arise in her. She hardly knows who this version of Finn Collins is, and her feelings for him are like that of an acquaintance. This is probably it for them. “Then no.” 

She finally comes upon a piece of cardstock addressed to Wells and Raven on one side, but on the other, holds a note. The words feel so familiar inside of her. Almost predictable. Her stomach knots up even tighter. 

“What the hell is this?” 

Raven stays silent, as always, awaiting Wells to speak up. He does after a beat of hesitation. “Exactly what it looks like, Clarke.”   


She fumbles through more papers until she finds another cardstock note, this one exactly the same as the last, only with the bolded names in swapped places. 

_ Dear Mr. and Mrs. Jaha,  _

** _Clarke Griffin_ ** _ has had  _ ** _Bellamy Blake_ ** _ erased from her memory. Please never mention their relationship to her again.  _

_ Thank you.  _

_ -Lacuna Inc. _ _ _

Clarke almost feels like she could throw up, but she takes a deep breath instead, and asks, “Who’s Bellamy Blake?” 

* * *

**One year ago**

It was something his stepfather used to say. Used to, as in, before his and Aurora’s untimely death when Octavia was sixteen and Bellamy was twenty one. They both knew he’d never be able to take her, but they tried, anyways, and failed all the same. 

When the state finally put her in foster care, those were the last words he’d left her with until the next time he saw her, two years later. 

Because those words meant something to them. They meant optimism. They meant that the end was in sight, and better things were soon to come. They were all that the two Blake siblings had all those months, alone and torn apart. 

It was around that time that he started writing the book, too, with a title of the same words. 

Maybe the story was a little morbid to tell from a teenager’s perspective, Raven certainly thought so, but they both understood what it was like to be broken in their youth, only to be stuck looking for peace the rest of their lives. 

That’s all Bellamy ever wanted, he realized as he typed page after page after page, all of his feelings throughout his life, every inch of loneliness he ever experienced, among all of the unrest.

He just wanted peace.

When the siblings were reunited, it was something of a celebration. He was fresh out of college, she was fresh into college, and he’d been saving up and working his ass off ever since she was torn from him to make sure she would always have a home to come back to. 

When she left again only months later, she said it wasn’t because she blamed him, but simply because she didn’t need him anymore. The last two years of her childhood were spent with a family who barely paid any attention to her, and because of that, she was independent. Octavia never placed that blame on Bellamy, and she told him this much, too. 

He blamed himself all the same, and he made sure that blame would stick. 

Eventually, she wasn’t just physically separated from him by choosing to live in an apartment with her newest boyfriend, but the way that Bellamy criticized her and placed all of his dirty laundry right into her arms where it didn’t belong is what eventually separated them emotionally, too. And that’s what he would never forgive himself for. 

But she came back to him for the first time in three years out of the blue. 

Bellamy felt like he’d been moving through life on autopilot until that day, the day he woke up to the sound of her furious knocking on his apartment door.

That day was today. 

He couldn’t believe how much of an adult she looked like now. Her bone structure had completely chiseled away at any baby fat, her hair was chopped to shoulder length rather than cascading down her back like he remembered it, and she was actually staring at  _ him _ with concern, as if he’d been the one who’d gone missing from  _ her _ life for three years. 

“Octavia?” And she almost looks relieved at his reaction to seeing her.

“Hey, Bell,” she sighs, wrapping her arms around his middle. Her height surely hadn’t changed a bit, and he finds himself grinning at the feeling of them being like children again, and his baby sister finding comfort next to him. But when she pulls away, her frown says that he has no reason to smile anymore. “Are you okay?” 

The question sort of surprises him. “What do you mean? Why wouldn’t I be?” Her shoulders fall slightly, but she just shakes her head to dismiss it. 

“Never mind. Can I- is it okay if I come in?” she asks nervously, glancing into his apartment. Suddenly, he feels a little self-conscious about how bare it looks. All at once, that feeling of being on autopilot resurfaces in his mind once again, and he realizes that he tore down much of the decor since the last time she was there. He lives a more minimalistic life now, it seems. He isn’t sure when that started. 

He steps aside for her, keeping his promise that she’d always have a home with him. “Of course. Do you want something to drink? Something to eat?” Octavia politely declines when she walks in, again glancing at the bare walls and the disarray of his apartment. 

Bellamy wasn’t usually such a messy person, and even looking around now, he feels like a stranger in his own apartment. But he didn’t really have an excuse for it. He supposes he hasn’t been paying attention to his own environment for a while now. 

They seat themselves on the couch, and as much as Bellamy desperately wants the tensions between them to magically disappear, they’re stronger than ever, keeping the two of them on edge. He never did get the chance to apologize to her directly. The thought arises disappointment in himself.

He attempts to break the silence with, “O-” at the same time that she starts saying, “I’m sorry-”

Octavia chuckles slightly, the sound arising a small smile from Bellamy at the other end of the couch. 

“Okay, big brother, you go first,” Octavia laughs. He feels relieved that they can still fall back into their old ways so easily, even after everything. 

“O, I’m so sorry for what I said to you.” He cringes at the sudden memory of his words coming back to him. “I told you my life ended the day you were born, the truth is, it didn't start until then.” Bellamy glances back up at his sister, who’s listening intently to his words, her brows furrowed and mouth set into a slight frown, clearly also recalling that horrible day. 

“Bellamy,” she says, now suddenly looking like she’s going to cry. “It’s okay. I know that you’re sorry. I don’t blame you for what you said. I know I was a pain in the ass to raise while mom was drugged out and while Marcus worked day and night to provide for us. You’re not the bad guy. Don’t ever think that you could be.” Bellamy feels tears sting his eyes. 

Octavia scoots herself closer to him and takes his hand in both of hers, encasing it and gently protecting the limb. “Bell, I came here for…” She hesitates, then sets her mouth in a thin line, as if she’s rethinking her words. Bellamy takes a little bit of pride in still being able to read her. She hasn’t changed all that much. “I’m sorry for leaving, I know how much it hurt you when I said that I didn’t need you anymore. I was just angry, and I had to take it out on somebody, and once I did, it sort of made me realize that I didn’t deserve your kindness for so long. And the main thing is,” she looks away now, rambling, and talking to herself more than Bellamy. He still watches her intently. 

“I mean, I thought I made the right decision, you know?” She runs a hand through her hair. “I thought everything would be okay, and _ you _ would be okay, because you had-” She abruptly stops herself, glancing back up at him. 

Bellamy furrows his brows. “What did I have?” What  _ did _ he have? He tries to piece it together the best that he can. Octavia felt like it was okay to leave because… But what did he have? Thinking back, he doesn’t think he had anything. He had the book, which she doesn’t know about, and he had the job, which she doesn’t care about. There are blank spots in his memory that cause his heart to ache. What did he have without Octavia? 

That’s been the question of his life. 

“You had your whole life ahead of you,” Octavia settles on. “I didn’t want to get in the way of that like I did growing up.” 

And just like that, they’re fixed. 

* * *

Clarke understands why they did it. Really, she does. She can’t blame them for it at all.

Even without contracts and legal agreements and whatnot, Wells tells her that she begged them to let her let him go, even though Raven so desperately wanted her to realize how shady the procedure was. If she was in their position, she would have let herself forget it all, too.

But the point is that right now, she wants to remember.

Finn has other objections.

“You can’t just withhold my own memories from me, Finn,” she growls, barreling past him to put her shoes on at the front door. 

“I’m just saying that you got this guy erased for a  _ reason _ . Why would you-” he stumbles over his words. “You don’t know what you’re running into.”

Raven and Wells follow behind them, the latter speaking first, “Leave her alone, Finn, this is her choice.” 

Clarke feels eternally grateful for their support. She almost expected them to also side with her lost memories rather than the ones she has now. Aside from just wanting to piece back together the last four years, she wants to put an end to her nightmares and to that never-ending feeling in the back of her mind of something lost or something forgotten. 

She turns back to Finn, “We’re done, Finn.” The words feel like a weight has been lifted off of her chest. 

“But-” he says, mouth dropped open, completely stunned. Clarke almost feels a little bad for him. Almost. She doesn’t want to hear it, though. If he’s not on her side, she doesn’t want him. 

“Alright, get out of here,” Raven says, opening the front door and pushing Finn out onto the sidewalk. She moves him further and further towards his car, despite his objections. Clarke smiles briefly, but drops it when she turns back to Wells, needing to stay focused. 

He takes in the emotion on her face for a moment. “Are you sure about this? Not to scare you, but this is sort of like opening Pandora's box.” The joke makes her snort, even through her attempts at staying serious. Clarke nods. 

She has to do this.

* * *

She doesn’t move back in the way he sort of wishes she would. Of course, she still has a life on the west coast with Lincoln and their three dogs. Octavia is grown up. It’s time for him to accept that.

And he does.

Octavia stays with him for a few weeks, although keeping a much closer eye on him than she really needs to, and he’s grateful for her presence. The loneliness of childhood had stretched into the loneliness of adulthood, and pretending to be okay with it by filling his bed with the scent of meaningless sex and his hookups’ perfume for a few nights actually affected him more negatively than he ever thought it would.

Girls like Echo, brunettes chiseled out of marble with long legs and fox eyes, were fun and full of life and challenges, obstacles to leap over, and plenty of red flags to ignore. She was everything he thought he needed. But Bellamy just couldn’t fall in love with her as hard as he tried. Even with the possibility of being exclusive, which she seemed to dangle in front of him like a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, he still couldn’t do it. They were better off physical and nothing more. They could hardly even be friends, really.

Even his most recent fling with a beautiful blonde girl named Bree, as the complete and utter opposite to Echo, all soft and rounded corners, wasn’t enough somehow. She was beautiful and funny, but she just didn’t occupy his mind for more than a few hours. And he could never blame them for it. It was him. He was the problem, he’s sure of it.

But he was done with all that now.

Bellamy didn’t know what path he would take next. All he knew was that he had to finish the book. And to get there, he sort of needed another opinion on it. 

“I never told anybody,” he says one morning during the second week of Octavia’s visit. “But I’m sort of writing a story.” He doesn’t turn to look at her, but the crunching of her cereal has since slowed to a contemplative rate, which he takes as her figuring out a response. “Or, I guess, a book is the end goal.” 

A book was definitely the end goal. He’d been writing it for more than five years now, and while it needs some heavy editing, he’s sure it’ll still be in the triple digits of page numbers. 

“That’s great, Bell,” Octavia says genuinely. He turns to glance at her with a sheepish smile, to find that she already has a proud one on her own lips. “When do I get to read it?” 

He lets her read it right away. He sets her up in front of the computer and brings up the documents, leaving the room to let her take it all in without distraction. It only takes her a few hours, but those few hours feel like days when Bellamy is going over in his head all of the possible stupid mistakes he could have made that might illegitimize his story, or make her think it’s not worth the read or even less worth finishing. Not to mention the sheer embarrassment that comes with sharing your childhood trauma with another main character in that story. 

When she comes out of the room, her eyes look puffy like she’d been shedding a few tears, and before he can say anything, she makes her way over to him on the couch and hugs him tighter than she ever has before, holding back a few sobs into his shoulder. 

Until that moment, he’d never really considered his story to be so… sad. Sure, it was his trauma, it was everything he still needed to heal from, it was everything he’d never shared with another person before, yet it still wasn't the whole story. 

This was his life. He’d long since felt completely numb to his own experiences. 

Only now, with Octavia mumbling “I’m sorrys” into his shoulder, does Bellamy Blake realize just how much he’s had to deal with in his life, more than many others will in their entire lives, and he’s just twenty-six. 

So it’s obvious from that point on that he needs to keep writing. 

He’s talking about it more, too, especially to Raven when she visits for the first time in a while, and Octavia asks if she can bring it up to her, because he could use a few more sets of eyes on the piece, which he of course gives his blessing to. Raven thanks him for letting her take a peak, though he’s pretty sure she doesn’t get to read the entire thing, as the two girls are back only a few moments later.

Still, Raven gives Bellamy a huge hug, one bigger than she’s ever given him, and encourages him once again to keep writing. The support and love around him from just these two women uplifts his heart, even hours later, as they’re eating dinner together, now with Miller having joined them, Bellamy feels good. His mind is at peace, his heart is full, and something inside of him whispers,  _ You’re not alone anymore _ . 

That something leaves him blinking in confusion at the sudden thought, stunning him at the strangely familiar words. The comforting syllables of each letter erupt more confusion inside of him than anything, but Bellamy decides to put that feeling away for a while. 

He’s just trying to enjoy himself. 

* * *

What Clarke hadn’t considered was a game plan. Did she even have the rights to her own memories? How many documents had she signed that said she gave them up entirely and would never come back for them ? How many contracts said that Lacuna could sue her if she tried to get them back?

As much research as Wells and Raven try to do, they find little answers.

“They don’t exactly advertise how much they legally want to keep your memories away from you,” Raven says, slamming her fingers into the keyboard frustratingly, searching for more. 

“It’s possible that they don’t make you sign anything of the sort,” Wells points out. Raven considers it. Clarke watches the two of them have a silent conversation back and forth, purely made up of body language and eye gestures. She envies them. 

She considers, without saying out loud, that the two of them could just relay everything they knew about her and Bellamy back to her. The idea of it actually sets her heart beating a little faster, excitement at figuring out her past rising in her blood.

But she deflates slightly at a realization: she doesn’t want a biased encounter of what happened between them. There’s two options: either Raven and Wells think that they should never have erased each other, or that they were right for doing so. 

Either way, she would rather hear it from herself in whatever format of documentation that Lacuna keeps of their clients’ memories.

“Let’s just drive up there and ask for everything,” Clarke blurts, interrupting their silent conversation. She’s just sick of not knowing. 

Wells and Raven glance at her, then back at each other, once again considering it silently, before agreeing. 

“We’ll drive you,” Wells says, grabbing his keys.

The outside of Lacuna sends a shiver up her spine. Something is hauntingly familiar about the building, which makes sense now, seeing as she must have been here quite a few times in order to fully go through with the process of erasing Bellamy Blake. 

“Do you want us to come in with you?” Raven offers from the passenger seat. Clarke doesn’t look at her, still examining every inch of the building from out the window. She shakes her head. “We’ll be out here if you need us, then. Call or text if we should come in.” 

And just like that, Clarke is walking inside. 

The waiting room is full of sad-looking people with boxes and bags full of memories. Clarke takes in each one of them, some with dog beds and water bowls, others with clothing and jewelry. She takes a shaky breath at the realization that she must have been one of these sad patrons once. 

The woman at the front desk is busy on the phone as Clarke approaches, her blonde hair hiding her face as she writes down information on a pad of paper. The desk is full of papers and folders and even framed pictures, which Clarke has to squint at in order to see from the distance. 

As the receptionist hangs up the phone and turns to help Clarke, she begins to panic. The nametag on the woman’s coat says HARPER in black letters. She is one of the faces in the photo.

“Welcome to Lacuna, how can I-?” Harper begins, but stops the moment she and Clarke make eye contact. Clarke narrows her eyes. Harper recognizes her. 

“You know me,” Clarke says. Harper purses her lips, then plasters on a fake smile. 

“What can I do for you today, Miss?” she says cheerily, pretending everything is normal. Clarke leans closer, into Harper’s space, looking deep into her eyes. 

“I want my memories back,” she says in a low voice. “Can you do that for me?” 

Harper’s smile is still in place, unwavering, yet her eyes are wide and give away to her worry. She nods a few times and says, “Of course, Ms. Griffin.” Clarke frowns at her, about to say more, until she realizes Harper’s frantic writing on another piece of paper in front of her. “Just sign this,” Harper says, handing the page to her, and peering around, as if someone might be watching. 

Clarke stares down at the page in her hands.  _ Monty Green room 2. _ She looks back up at Harper and nods once, muttering a thank you before turning the corner, down a hallway of rooms. 

Procedure rooms, Clarke assumes, as she searches for room 2. It’s the second to last room down the hall, with a closed door. She doesn’t quite get the formality of the situation here, but assumes that being polite might aid her in getting more information. 

So she knocks a few times, only then realizing her hands are shaking. She takes a deep breath as a voice calls, “Come in!” from the other side. 

Clarke pushes open the door. 

A man in a lab coat spins around from his computer to face her. His name tag says DR GREEN. Clarke feels relieved that she successfully found him, and realizes that he was the other person in the picture on Harper’s desk.

He seems surprised to see her, too, eyebrows raised and scanning her features. If Harper recognized her, it wouldn’t be too far off to assume Monty does, too. 

“Harper sent me,” Clarke says, closing the door behind her. Harper was afraid of somebody hearing her help Clarke, so maybe Clarke should be afraid of the same thing. She holds up the note to Monty, just in case he might think she’s lying. 

“And what did she send you for?” he asks carefully. It seems like they’re treading on thin ice. Clarke sets her mouth in a thin line. 

_ “ _ I want my memories back.” 

* * *

**Present Day**

Gina Martin could be Bellamy’s best decision ever. 

She started working at the library just a few months ago as their new IT lady, and while he really tried not to get a crush on her, it seemed sort of impossible. She was cute and funny, all pouty lips and sly smiles. They had so much in common, from their favorite movie genres to their mutual interest in ancient history.

Outside of work, they hung out quite a few times, and while he doesn’t really know how to date, considering monogamy has never been his strong suit, he thinks that he really wants to date her. 

Gina Martin  _ could _ be Bellamy’s best decision ever. He should go for it. He should. 

“You’d be dumb not to,” Octavia says plainly over the phone. She finally went back home after staying with him for just two months, but even with distance, they’re closer than ever. “She’s clearly into you, you’re clearly into her. What’s stopping you?”

And that was the age-old question. What was stopping Bellamy from finding his peace?

“It’s kinda hard to explain,” Bellamy admits, scratching the back of his neck nervously. “I’ve been having these…” he hesitates, searching for the right word, “dreams, I guess?”

Octavia hums doubtfully. “This isn’t like when you tried to convince me you were psychic, is it?” Bellamy chuckles and rolls his eyes, taking a seat on his couch. 

“No, O, I’m serious,” he insists, furrowing his brows. “I don’t know, I don’t remember them, but I just get this  _ weird _ feeling.” 

Said feeling was actually  _ more _ than just weird, in Bellamy’s opinion. It was kind of nerve-wracking, actually. There would be moments while he’s talking to Gina and everything’s fine, but then, all of a sudden, he notices how pretty she is or he pays attention to the butterflies that rise in his stomach, and that unsteady feeling comes inching back. Immediately, he thinks back to how he slept the night before, like the two events are correlated. 

Except, he can’t remember any dreams. It’s like a blank film plays on repeat in his head from the moment he falls asleep to the moment he wakes up. And yet…

There’s always that lurking feeling. 

He doesn’t explain this to Octavia, though, because she would probably go on about how he’s denying himself happiness, which, maybe he is, but he doesn’t need to hear it right now. So, instead he sighs.

“It’s whatever, though. I just have to work up the guts to ask her out.” 

“You better,” Octavia says humorlessly. “I want plenty of little nieces and nephews.” 

To be fair, he would also love to have children, but Bellamy cringes at his sister’s words anyways, and says, “Gross, O. Don’t talk--even indirectly--about my sex life.” She laughs at his reaction. 

Bellamy never does formally ask Gina out, but they go on dates, anyways, and she never pushes him to make them exclusive, and he never brings it up. He refuses to, really, because every time he tries to think about their future, that feeling creeps back up his spine and he has to force it away again.

When she stays over, and they’re cuddling in the same bed, exchanging kisses and whispers, the dreams don’t come. Not that they ever  _ really _ did, truly, considering the brick wall that his mind meets every time he attempts to remember if they did, but that unsteady feeling goes away for a while.

It's pretty amazing. 

He never does share the book with Gina, but he still shares pieces of himself, nonetheless. More about him and his mother rather than him and Octavia, and more of what he wants from the future rather than what he holds in the past, and in return, Gina shares pieces of herself with him, too. 

Gina loves to skydive and build computers. She loves cooking more than baking and has so many recipes to share with Bellamy. She can’t stand cinnamon, but loves cacao, and this revelation even sparks a humorous debate between the two of them. 

Octavia notes that Bellamy sounds brighter over the phone, and he says, “Yeah, I feel brighter,” while everything seems to finally be falling into place. 

Until…

It’s their lazy Sunday a month later. 

Gina is curled up under his arm, steady breathing like she’s about to fall asleep again, after they just woke up a few hours ago. He wants to bury himself in her warmth, he wants to watch her forever.

Bellamy runs his free hand over her dark curls until her lashes flutter and her brown eyes find his. She smiles. He smiles. 

He speaks without thinking, “Do you remember how lonely it was to be a kid?” The words feel achingly familiar falling from his lips. His movements in her hair still when suddenly, that  _ feeling _ comes inching its way back to the forefront of his mind, stronger than ever. It’s almost like… deja vu, yet ten times more utterly confusing and… almost scary. Bellamy clenches his jaw. If Gina notices, she doesn’t say anything. 

She just props herself up on her forearms and cocks her head slightly, considering his words carefully. His eyes follow her movements calmly, but on the inside, he’s on hyper-drive. 

“I don’t know,” she answers honestly. Bellamy remembers her talking about her childhood before. She and him had similar experiences with their low-income families. Only, Gina was the second youngest of four very close siblings. Her mother and father, while they worked heavily to provide for the large family, never let their children forget that they loved them. Maybe she never was lonely.

That was where they differed. 

“Why?” Gina asks softly, reaching up and tracing the freckles on his cheekbone with her thumb. The touch, instead of bringing comfort, feels almost as if it burns, and he has to reach up and take her hand away to get the feeling to subside. Gina takes the action as him simply trying to hold her hand. 

Bellamy rolls with it. “Never mind.” Gina nods understandingly, never pushing any further, and remaining endlessly patient with him. She lies back down, closing her eyes, and remaining still until her breathing evens out again. He looks away from her, willing the aching inside of him to go away, praying that it does so he can just finally, finally be happy. 

But it never does. 

* * *

Monty looks afraid of the words she spoke. Clarke supposes she would be, too, if her job was to keep people’s memories out of their heads, and then they came storming back a year later, demanding that she put them right back in. 

But these are  _ her _ memories. And _ he _ stole them from her.

Even if it was at her request. 

“You- how did you…” Monty furrows his brows, “remember?” 

Clarke sighs. “Your stupid procedure? It didn’t work. I keep getting this  _ itching _ feeling, this… horrible aching inside of my mind like I’m  _ forgetting _ something or- or-” She searches blindly for descriptors. “Lost something important.” 

Monty stands and examines her frustration from up close. “Fascinating. And when did this start?” 

Clarke frowns and crosses her arms, shaking her head. “Uh-uh, no. I’m not gonna be your little guinea pig, okay?” 

Monty deflates at her words, but nods, agreeing to her terms. He turns back to his desk and searches through the drawers for a moment. “Fair enough. You’re not the only one, you know.”  Clarke raises a brow at that. “What do you mean?”

Monty turns back around with a set of keys in his hand. “You’re not the only one who ends up remembering… something. It varies from person to person, though, there’s only about a handful. You just have a feeling, others gain entire memories back. The only difference is that,” he walks towards the door, “You aren’t here to make sure they’re gone for good.” 

Clarke takes in this information, and her frown deepens. “So, you guys know that your service doesn’t even  _ work _ , and yet, you still advertise that it does?” Monty raises his hands in innocence. 

“Hey, it’s pretty rare considering how many patients we go through,” Monty says just before he opens the door, looks both ways cautiously, then turns back and motions for her to follow him into the next room. She does, doing the same cautious glances down each end of the hallway. 

The volume of his voice drops as he goes on, unlocking the next door and opening it, “It’s a technical error, and considering I’m a technician, I intend to fix it.” 

The idea sends chills down Clarke’s spine. If he fixes the problem, then some people, like herself, may never get the memories back that they actually  _ want _ . But if he doesn’t, then their service is a total rip-off and all of these “doctors” are complete hacks. 

Impossible choices. 

The next room that they enter is far more bland than the waiting room, full of dozens of grey filing cabinets among simple cream white walls. Clarke feels creeped out by the room, despite it seeming harmless enough. She assumes these cabinets are packed full of stolen memories. 

Monty goes over to one in particular, unlocks the cabinet with a small key on the set, and pulls out the seemingly endless drawer. “Clarke Griffin, right?” She nods first before realizing he’s faced away from her. 

“Yes,” she answers. Then, it occurs to her, “How do you remember me among your  _ many _ patients?” Harper instantly remembered her, too. Clarke doesn’t expect that they pay that close attention to each of their customers. 

“Well,” Monty starts, throwing a grin back at her before continuing his search for her name in the next drawer below the one he first opened. “You made quite the impression. In more than one way.”

Clarke shifts uncomfortably. What does  _ that _ mean?

“First, you come barging in here, demanding answers, much like you did today, after you read a very confidential letter from Lacuna,” Monty goes on. He means the letter they send to each of a patient’s friends or relatives after they get someone erased, Clarke realizes.

She saw the letter they sent to Raven and Wells when Bellamy had her erased. And she came looking for answers. 

Clarke knew he erased her first from how Wells explained it, but realizing it again is like a punch to the gut. She needs to know what happened between them.

“Then, after we mapped your mind and began the process,” he continues, still pulling out folders and putting them back when he realizes they’re not the right Clarke Griffin’s. “You fall off the map!” he laughs like he’s reliving a humorous scene in a movie instead of her life. She scowls at the back of his head. “I almost strangled Finn for that one-” She blinks. 

“Wait what?” her mouth is speaking before the words catch up with her brain. Finn. Finn.  _ He _ was involved in her erasing Bellamy?

Monty turns back at her, confused, “What to what?” 

“Finn,” she says. “Collins?” There can’t be that many Finns in this town. Monty nods slowly. 

“Do you remember more than you’re actually letting on?” he asks her suspiciously. Clarke shakes her head, rolling her eyes. 

“No. I’m- I  _ was _ dating him. For a few months, actually.” Her cheeks redden at the admission. Finn used her. He met her while she was unconscious, and then took advantage of what he knew about her. He was in her home  _ before _ she knew him. 

Monty’s expression softens. “I’m sorry,” he says genuinely. “He was fired, if that makes you feel better.” Clarke isn’t sure if it does. 

“Why was he fired?” she asks hesitantly. 

“Stopped showing up to work,” Monty shrugs, turning back to the cabinets. Clarke nods, realizing that Finn didn’t really share much of his professional life with her. How could she be so stupid? He didn’t even have a  _ job _ , and-

Job.

“Oh, shit,” she gasps, pulling out her phone. Monty asks her what’s wrong, just as she looks at the time. She’s about three hours late for work. “I think I’m about to be fired, too.” How could she be so  _ stupid _ ? 

He chuckles, finally closing the cabinet behind him, and revealing a fresh file in his hands with the name CLARKE GRIFFIN typed onto a sticker stuck to the tab. She turns her attention from work to what she came here for, figuring she can always just find another miserable job. There are plenty.

“Here you are,” he says as he hands them to her. She quickly thanks him and turns to quickly leave so she can get to the bottom of her memories much sooner, and maybe try to salvage what’s left of her career, but Monty stops her. “Oh, and one more thing. Um, this is sort of against protocol.” 

Clarke furrows her brows. “What do you mean?” 

Monty seems embarrassed to continue, “Well, we aren’t really supposed to just  _ give _ back the memories. In fact, legally, my boss could sue me for helping you, because it goes against a multitude of contracts that we all signed and your loved ones signed on your behalf to keep your memories away from you.”  _ Ah, so there was a catch _ . 

She narrows her eyes. “So, why’d you break the contracts for me?” She searches his eyes for any malice. As far as she can tell, there’s only truth. 

Monty hesitates. “I guess because I regret turning so many other people away from what they really want.” He turns back around and motions to the cabinets. “There are so many people in here. Forgotten. And much of that is  _ my _ fault.”

“Maybe you should give them back,” Clarke muses, considering just how many people would appreciate their memories versus how many would attempt to get them erased again. Monty turns to her then, and gives her a sad smile, but he doesn’t answer.

When she walked into Lacuna Inc. that day, she did not expect to be leaving with anything other than the documentation of her memories--or maybe even a lawsuit. She really didn’t expect to be walking out the back door, so as to not draw any suspicious eyes to the folder in her arms, glancing back at that filing cabinet room, and trying to figure out a way to get back inside once the lights were out.

Back in Wells’s car, she sits silently for a moment. 

The married couple look at each other for a moment, awaiting Clarke to explain what happened, before Raven pipes up, “How’d it go in there?” The two of them eye the hefty folder. 

Clarke takes another moment to respond, looking down at the file and gently running her fingers over the cover, considering her next words. 

“Clarke?” Wells inquires. She finally looks up at them, glancing between their eyes. 

And she says, “We have to give them all back.” 

* * *

Bellamy, the king of pushing away happiness, is going to be chewed out for this one. 

Gina is understanding enough, simply turning away from him with sad eyes and a small nod. His chest aches to see her upset, but his mind buzzes even more harshly at the thought of comforting her. He just can’t do it. 

She didn’t notice any difference until recently, when she tried to initiate more intimacy between them, and he couldn’t stand her touch for longer than a few seconds. It was a hard conversation to have. 

And Bellamy’s sure that it’s just  _ him _ . That there’s no  _ real _ reason why he can’t be with Gina, it’s all in his head, intentionally denying him the peaceful life he so craves, most likely because of his childhood trauma and inability to care for himself the way he cares for others. 

At least, that’s what his book tells him when he types out his and Gina’s story, and he reads all the way back through from the beginning, and everything points to his upbringing. 

For consistency’s sake, Octavia  _ does _ chew him out over the phone, and that is a punishment he takes gracefully. 

“Bellamy,” she says sternly after a moment of silence. She was expecting an answer to something, but he didn’t have one. He wasn’t listening. 

“Hm?” he hums, toying with a loose string from his bed sheets. Octavia sighs, disappointed like a mother would be in her son. Aurora used the same one on her children. 

“I’m coming to visit,” she says. Bellamy tries to object, but she continues. “Just for a few weeks. I wanna make sure you’re okay.”

“I am okay,” he tries to assure her. He is. Really.

“Well, I’d feel better if I could see you,” Octavia says. 

So she comes. 

It only further pushes Bellamy into his guilt, feeling like he’s taking Octavia away from her life. Like she’s putting it on pause for him. 

She must read his mind, because once she sees him, she says, “You’d do the same for me. You have.” And she’s right. He would. He did.

And for a few days, it’s quiet. Bellamy goes to work, avoids Gina, comes home, avoids Octavia. As much as he loves his sister, he doesn’t really want to confront the issues she’s trying to bring to the surface. He can write them, but speaking them is a whole other story. He tried that with Gina. It didn’t work. 

Octavia doesn’t exactly push for him to, either. She lets him dance around her, avoiding dinner conversation, answering “how are yous” with one word sentences, and Bellamy appreciates the space. 

But of course the silence never lasts long around Octavia. 

“Talk to me,” she demands one morning, particularly a day he has off of work, so he has little time to avoid her. 

Bellamy looks up at her from the table where he’s eating breakfast. He doesn’t really have anything to say. “What do you want to talk about?” he asks innocently. Octavia clenches her jaw. 

“Bell,” she pleads. He sighs and runs his hand through his hair. 

“What do you want me to say, O?” he finally says. Octavia frowns. “No, seriously. Am I supposed to talk about my feelings? Am I supposed to pretend I’m okay so you can go back home?” 

Octavia crosses her arms. “You know that’s not-”

Bellamy stands, taking his dishes to the kitchen sink. He leans over the basin, trying to organize his thoughts. He’s being unfair, he knows that. He knows.

She follows him into the kitchen, leaning against the door frame. “I’m here whenever you’re ready.” 

He sighs and turns around, resting back against the countertop. “I just can’t do it, O.” 

Octavia straightens, ready to listen. “Can’t do what?” 

“I just… can’t… love somebody,” he admits, hanging his head and rubbing at his eyes as he feels a headache start to come on. “I tried to. I really tried with Gina. I felt like I might be able to, and I got so… close-” Octavia strides over to him and envelopes his torso into a hug. Bellamy leans into it, resting his chin on top of her head of black hair. 

“Yes you  _ can _ , Bell,” Octavia mumbles into his shoulder. “You-” she stops. Bellamy waits for her words, feeling his heart aching with every passing second. Of course she’d believe in him, but it’s useless. It’s- 

“You have.” 

Bellamy stills at her words. Octavia burrows her head further into his shoulder, like she said something she shouldn’t have. 

“What are you talking about?” he whispers. He’s never loved anyone before, not like he wants to. 

Octavia pulls back, tears staining her cheeks. If he looked, there would no doubt be tear marks on his shirt. But he can’t look away from her. What is she talking about? 

She wipes at her cheeks and says, “You just don’t remember.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this story took a lot out of me, much like the movie itself did (i highly recommend it for those of you who haven't watched). tragical romance is our favorite kind, after all.....
> 
> thank you for reading and stay tuned for the next and final chapter! it will be out sooner than this one was...

**Author's Note:**

> my tumblr: savebellamy


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